For me, it’ll likely be a lot of Star Wars Squadrons this weekend, both for Space Game Junkie and myself. I also plan to take a sloop out in Sea of Thieves by myself and practice sailing. We’ve been getting addicted to that game and I wanna be more useful. Might also fit some Soldat 2 and Bloody Rally Show matches in as well. Should be a good weekend.
We’re having record temperatures these days here (every day has been above 35C for a week now), so I won’t play anything that makes my GPU go hot. So that means no AC: Odyssey, no Horizon Zero Dawn, no Monster Hunter World, no… a lot of games.
So, maybe I’ll play AI War 2, or Hades, or Death End Re;Quest, or go back to Guild Wars 2, or something else. I’ll figure it out eventually.
Yeah but AC should totally cool off your PC!
Thank you folks! I’m here all week!
Enidigm
6485
I’ve got quite a backlog of October-y games i’d like to play, but i’ve got some engagements that will last until the 16th that will take up all my gaming time until then. A couple are very long on the backlog, but i just haven’t had the mindset to play them.
One action-y title is Dark Devotion - but i’m not sure i have the patience to plow through it. I’m not really an side scrolling platformer anyway so i might have to bail - Salt and Sanctuary, the side scrolling “Dark Soul’s like” is so hard to me that i can’t even beat the first mini boss. It’s very possible i’m just not going to be able to make progress past a certain point in DD.
This weekend I will try to get to one or two Halloweeny games from my back log. Need to finish up Resident Evil 2 remake and maybe I’ll check out Evil Within .
Aside from that, have been playing Alliance Alive HD on Switch so will put some time into it this weekend. Great JRPG, but I wish the combat was much more difficult. It’s a cakewalk so far and while there are a ton of skills that open up, you only ever need to use one or two. The difficulty level of that developer’s previous game, Legend of Legacy is much better. Wish they had updated that one to HD, but I will happily keep playing it on the 3DS.
Started Wasteland 3 and having fun with it so far. Never got far with Wasteland 2, so maybe I’ll give it another chance when I’m done with 3.
kerzain
6488
Rebel Galaxy Outlaw (Xbox One)
After playing this all weekend, I get the feeling I played this game wrong from the start. I bought the game when it released on xbox recently and quickly unlocked (purchased) all ships and upgrades available in the starter system (Texas) system before moving on to new systems. I didn’t realize it at the time, but after having now explored from one end of the galaxy to the other, it appears as though all the upgrades in Texas are actually all the upgrades in the game. I’m still earning money, but I can’t find anything useful to buy with it.
Now, I did all this by simply bounty hunting and doing randomly generated missions board missions. I planned to start the campaign after maxing out all the starter system ships and components, but since these might be all that’s available I’m not sure I’ll have a reason to run through the campaign except to see it play out.
It’s totally possible the campaign will unlock new stuff for me to strive for, but I won’t know till I try it. In the mean time, I can’t think of any reason to play in one system vs the next except to follow mission waypoints–since, except for certain pirate factions and trade goods (which I don’t need to worry about since I don’t need money), the systems all seem pretty similar in what they have to offer.
I’m scratching my head over this one.
Can’t…Stop…Playing…Norman’s Sky…
I might need an intervention.
My most-played game this weekend ended up being my all-time favorite, Ultima III.
I wanted to see if I could beat it with a party of only two characters. (Three seems too easy, one too hard.) I rolled a Paladin (capable of casting cleric spells) and a Druid (capable of casting wizard and cleric spells, but at the penalty of reduced magic points).
Aided by the critical heal and ‘appar unem’ (open chest) spells, we toodled along quite nicely in the early game and I think I had a shot to get this duo all the way to Exodus’s castle, though I was (and remain) highly skeptical of whether they could make it through that place alive, with its large numbers of 8x dragon and balron parties.
Anyway, the jaunt came to a premature end when I got greedy on level 7 of a dungeon, wandering around and opening tons of chests, and ran into an 8x balron party that made short work of us. Once your party dies, they are flagged as ‘dead’ in the game’s roster, and you can’t just reload; you’d have to disperse the party, reform it with new (living) characters, and then go to a healer and pay 500gp each to resurrect them.
The problem with a 2-person party is that a lot of your characters’ increased survivability comes down to increased hit point totals. Gear doesn’t account for much, and although you can increase your stats at certain shrines, the dual classing aspect caps the benefit from this because your magic points (derived from wisdom and int) are so drastically reduced. And when you’re talking about battles against 8x max level monsters, you’re depriving yourself (assuming all characters are max level) of 5100 hit points’ worth of damage sinkage that would be present in the empty character slots.
I could roll some new characters to bring the dead guys into their party and resurrect them, but it kinda feels like cheating. Maybe I’ll try again another time. I might go with a straight-up mage for the 2nd party member, as the spell point reduction is really painful. And there’s no reason to wander on the bottom levels of dungeons until you’re as powerful as you can be and ready to get the few items (special ‘marks’ that unlock certain areas for you) that actually have to be acquired in those areas.
What I played the most this weekend was…
…One Piece Warriors 3.
After playing a bit of Hyrule Warriors with my kid (one of my favorite musou games, along with Dynasty Warriors 8 XLCE) I found myself in a musou mood. And I had One Piece Warriors 3 in my library and never had tried it. So I did, and I’m glad I did. It plays great so far.
If anyone has a better musou game to recommend, I’m all ears! ;)
Much to my surprise I ended up playing Sea of Thieves most of the weekend with my 13-year old son and two friends. We had a great time doing quests and sailing around.
I also got a bit of time in with Star Wars Squadrons. I finally have my Imp Bomber and HOTAS setup the way I like!
Finally, I got through another story mission or two in Battletech. Really trying to finish that off, but I keep getting distracted.
I gathered the material to forge a nice ice stick in MHGU, based on my mentor’s advices for the darn Alatreon fight. When the weapon was complete, I sure kicked its flat ass!
I also stopped playing Hades. The crashes appear to be fixed on the Switch, but as usual with those guys’ games, I seem to get pulled away by the subpar gameplay after a few hours. Like in Bastion and what-was-that-other-game’s-name?, the storytelling can’t suplement boredom over the very repetitive and hardly stimulating action. After a few hours, the mechanics behind the curtain start to also become apparent — another case of a probably amazing three hours game stretching itself, to ill results.
I then started playing Ys Origin, which is serviceable if unimaginative. The jump seems strangely unresponsive in combat, as if its input was limited. I should look that up online, but I’ll have forgotten till I play again.
vyshka
6494
Ended up playing more Skyrim. I’m about 26 hours in now. I should probably spend some time getting to understand crafting.
Kelan
6495
Awesome! Wish I had the patience to try this again one day, but most likely with a full party. Maybe I will give it another try sometime. Ultima III is still in my top 10 all time. I don’t remember where I ranked it when I did the top 100 here. I should check. Guess I put Ultima IV 3rd, and lumped in III with it. For shame!
I don’t think I knew you could do that! My first time through, I got all the way to the end and did the last encounter wrong, I am sure you know what I am talking about, and then all my characters were killed! I had to start all over, but the second time at the end I did it properly and won. It went much faster once I knew how and where to accomplish the necessary steps to get to the end. I don’t believe I had any external help, which made me proud to accomplish it. I wish I still had all of my notes and maps. How else did we do that back then anyway, when a game was still new? I did get good at pulling my floppy out of my drive when I was going to die in an encounter, though. I believe that was my version of a reload, heh.
I have still been playing ARK a lot, but looking for something new to play around with.
For Space Game Junkie, i’ve been asked to play Spaceforce: Rogue Universe which is a weird eastern European space game from the late-aughts. For myself, I’m back on a kick of Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr, as the bloodshed in that game is just wonderful, and I’m needing it right now. Also of course more Bloody Rally Show as well as A pirate quartermaster, as I’m dying to see how my current journey will end.
This long weekend it’s Baldur’s Gate 3 for sure. Also Train Station Renovation. And a bit of The Solitaire Conspiracy. And at least a little No Man’s Sky. Hey, that sound like a lot of fun,
RichVR
6498
Hope to finally finish my first run through of Wasteland 3. Even though I made a lot of early mistakes I have thoroughly enjoyed it. It seems that I will be able to min/max the second game. Time to up the difficulty I suppose.
Bloodborne from scratch for Spooky October.
And Rock Band 3 on the 360 to satisfy a personal craving.
And Wasteland 3 if the Game Pass version gets the latest patch this weekend.
As someone who has institutionally despised roguelikes because I am old with the reflexes of a tranquilized sloth I have become so badly addicted to dead cells it’s ridiculous. This is all I am playing recently.
